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The Ghost Rider Spirit of Vengeance in and of itself isn’t a bad movie. It’s got a decent plot, lots of action, and Johnny Blaze on the edge of sanity. My problem with the movie is the last time we saw Johnny, he was standing tall, telling Roarke (the Devil) he was going to wear the curse and stop him at every turn. A nice set-up for the next movie.

Our next visit with Blaze, we find Johnny a wreck. He’ll do anything to get his hands on tranquilizers, or any kind of drug he can get his hands on, for that matter, all in a desperate bid to keep the demon in him at bay. It’s obvious Johnny has lost it, he’s at the edge of insanity, and a shadow of the man whom we last saw at the end of GR 1. It’s hard to identify with the character in his current condition. He’s got no supporting characters surrounding him and has gone from likable, to a completely desperate man on the brink.

That would be OK, if we were with him when the demon started  exerting more and more control. We could have identified with him and felt sympathy for him as he fell further and further into despair. Yes it would have required more than one adversary, but the story would have demanded it. We could have seen him alienate his friends and loved ones as the more he changed the more he lost control. We would have seen how his humanity lead him to the position he is in at the beginning of this movie. Essentially we are missing a movie and I think it would have been a good one at that. It would have followed a path that led to The Spirit of Vengeance, keeping Blaze infinitely more likable without changing a word of the current script,  but we didn’t get that. That all got skipped over and what we got is Ghost Rider 3 instead of Ghost Rider 2.